middle helladic to the late helladic i shaft graves 30 страница

This might seem to be a case of Greek art influencing Persian art. Certainly the fluted columns and some of the architectural ornament derive from Ionian architecture, but the relationship is more com­plicated than that. The lion attack had been a staple of Greek art since the eighth century, but it was also a common motif in Assyrian and Near Eastern art as an expression of royal power. The subject matter of the Persepolis reliefs, guards and tribute bearers, also draws upon Near Eastern traditions that the Persians have adapted for their purposes. Ultimately, we have to think about the purpose of the palace as an expression of Persian rule over a vast and diverse kingdom, and that the artists, materials, and subjects found in the art and architecture at Persepolis have been subsumed to serve Persian purposes. We might consider this a case of adaptation that expresses dominance over the source while serving to create a structure that was an easily recognizable symbol of Persian power.

The processional friezes at Persepolis have led to theories in turn about the influence of Achaemenid art on classical Athens, and in particular the Parthenon. The processional frieze of the Parthenon (see Figure 1.1, page 2; Figure 10.12, page 249; Figure 10.15, page 250) is without prec­edent in Greek architectural sculpture, as is the placement of an Ionian frieze on the cella of a Doric temple. The Periklean building program was on one level a memorial to the victory of Athens over Persia; an adaptation of the procession bearing tribute to the king to one bringing an offering to the goddess Athena would resonate with elements of Athenian propaganda, but the idea remains hypo­thetical (Root 1985).

Another building of Perikles also shows a formal connection to Persian architecture, the Odeion next to the Theater of Dionysos at the southeast foot of the Acropolis (see Figure 7.4, page 160). This building was a hypostyle hall, just slightly rectangular rather than square (62.4 X 68.6 m), that was used, at least in later times, for music contests. Its archaeological details are very sketchy: the Periklean structure was destroyed in the sack of Athens by the Roman general Sulla in 86 все and then rebuilt. In Plutarch’s second-century се biography of Perikles (Vita Perikles 13.10), the writer tells us that “They say that it is the image (eikona) and the imitation (mimema) of the tent of the Persian King” (tr. Miller 1997, 221). Like the hypostyle halls of the palaces, the Persian king’s cam­paign tent was a huge structure with many poles and rooms within it, but Margaret Miller has argued that we should look to the Apadana of the Persian kings as the model for the Odeion. Certainly the construction of a nearly square, stone hypostyle building in Athens was unprecedented in the fifth century все and its size is similar to the Apadana at Persepolis, making it the largest interior space in Greece at the time. To much later viewers, it continued to look foreign rather than Greek.

In building the Odeion, Perikles may have been asserting the power and prestige of Athens as the center of its own empire. Persia offered a model for imperial architecture and, by building it, Perikles

distinguished Athens as distinct and different from the other cities of Greece, including powerful cities like Sparta, Corinth, and Thebes. This would appear to be a case of adaptation and emulation, and it seems likely based on the testimony that the building continued to look “Persian," and there­fore distinctive, to its viewers in later centuries. It is interesting to consider that even though Greek artists worked on and contributed to the Persian Apadana, the influence of Greek art on Persian culture is modest at best, whereas the influence of Persia on Greece at various levels is varied and stronger. We need to recognize that Greek art did not exist in isolation or spring fully formed on its own, but that it existed within a network of ancient cultures whose current of ideas, materials, and style ebbed and flowed throughout the Mediterranean and Near East.

Some examples of Greece’s cross-cultural relationships have appeared in many of the previous chapters. For example, it has been suggested that the kouros from Palaikastro emulates the Egyptian canon of proportions (see Figure 2.14, page 37), and certainly its use of hippopotamus ivory is just one piece of evidence of the trade in materials and objects from the Bronze Age that we saw in Chapters 2 and 3. In the Geometric period we see Near Eastern artists and materials coming to Greece (see Figure 4.6, page 76; Figure 4.14, page 85; Figure 11.12, page 281) and Near Eastern motifs like the heraldic animals flanking a sacred tree being exported in a Greek Geometric style (see Figure 4.11, page 82). The scale of exchange escalated in the seventh cen­tury with the imitation and adaptation of new motifs like the sphinx (see Figure 6.13, page 143), griffin (see Figure 6.9, page 139; Figure 6.14, page 143), sacred trees, and Mistress of Animals (see Figure 6.17, page 145), and in some cases the imported ideas are exported, sometimes back to the east (see Figure 6.10, page 140; Figure 6.11, page 141; Figure 6.14, page 143). Monumental stone sculpture was adapted by the Greeks, in terms of both form and stonework techniques (see Figure 6.3, page 134; Figure 6.4, page 135), although the study of the proportional systems and carving techniques of statues suggests that there were multiple points of origin and not a single source or model. Painted figural pottery from Greece, especially with narrative scenes, became a widely dispersed commodity in the Mediterranean, and in Etruria there are limited adoptions of the Greek black-figure and red-figure technique. That exchange went in both directions is seen in the adoption of Etruscan shapes in Greek pottery workshops for sale in the Etruscan market (see Figure 11.8, page 277).

With the fourth century we saw that red-figure pottery workshops became prolific in southern Italy and Sicily, but these painters were creating for a local market that was sometimes Greek, but frequently mixed (as in the case of Metapontum/Metaponto and Poseidonia/Paestum) or primarily non-Greek (in Apulia). New shapes and subjects were developed to meet this market. Elsewhere the classical style became more international, with Mausolos hiring Greek sculptors to decorate his Mausoleion (see Figure 12.4, page 292), and new patrons and religious ideas became important in the northern Greek kingdoms. In the course of the Hellenistic period the Greek rulers shaped their images for both a Greek audience (see Figure 14.26, page 370) and local audience (see Figure 14.25, page 370). Alexandria and Antioch were now two of the greatest Greek cities, though very diverse in their populations.

Finally, Romans became the occupiers of Greece and both “collectors” and patrons of Greek art. The Greek classicizing style becomes the idealizing style of Roman statues and the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders were adopted wholesale for the facades of Roman buildings made of brick and concrete. Rome continues the classical tradition, assimilating the style and some models of Greek art (see Figure 10.7, page 243; Figure 12.11, page 300), but created new cat­egories and types of sculpture to make it truly Roman. The reuse of Roman building materials and constant discovery of statues from the Roman empire meant that the Greco-Roman classi­cal past would continue to be discovered and rediscovered after antiquity, leading to Greece being viewed as the birthplace of western art.

Like many stories, the legacy of Greece is complex and changing. Neoclassical architecture and sculpture in the nineteenth century borrowed liberally from Greek styles and forms. The modernism
of the twentieth century put it out of favor, only for it to return in a transformed pastiche of postmodernism. Today, the aesthetic standard of Greek art is no longer reason alone for why we should study its history, but understanding its purpose and meaning to the culture that produced it is still important. Indeed, we might look at one final work of Greek art to offer a rationale for its relevance today. A votive relief from the Acropolis dating about 470 все shows Athena leaning on a spear with her helmet raised up on the crown of her head (Figure 15.4). Her head is bowed and her eyes glance toward a slab seen in profile; it too is a stele like the object itself. We cannot see the front of the stele she looks at, but most scholars agree that it would have an inscribed text that she is reading. The most attractive theory is that the names of Athenian citizens who had recently died in battle were inscribed on it, like the cas­ualty lists that we mentioned in the discussion of the monument of Dexileos (see Figure 12.12, page 301). Athena’s finger touches her hair, and while this is not the gesture of tearing one’s hair in grief found in funer­ary images, which would not be appropriate for a god­dess, it does suggest that she could be mourning the deceased, hence the nickname of the stele. As we have seen in many monuments of Greek art, it was impor­tant to remember the deceased, particularly their names and accomplishments. Athena, an immortal viewer, remembers these names for the generations to come.

One of the purposes of history is also to remember and understand why events happened, and for art history, to comprehend why and how works of art and architecture were made. Herodotos, the first Greek historian, sets out precisely his purpose in writing about the war between the Greeks and Persians in his first sentences:

I, Herodotos of Halicarnassus, am here setting forth my history, that time may not draw the color from what man has brought into being, nor those great and wonderful deeds, manifested by both Greeks and barbarians, fail of their report, and, together with all this, the reason why they fought one another. (Herodotos 1.1; tr. Grene)

Herodotos’s literary image of fading color over time resonates particularly well with the decay and destruction of art and buildings, but the fragments of Greek art and architecture still remain and ask us to remember what they are and the people who made, used, and saw them.

This power of names and memory continues to endure in our culture, as can be seen strikingly in a contemporary monument, Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, dedicated in 1982. The design is deceptively simple, a granite wall set in a V-shape, with the names of the Americans who died in Vietnam inscribed chronologically on it (Figure 15.5). The design was not without criticism after it was built as it lacked any figural sculpture, traditional in war monuments like the Iwo Jima memorial. The design, however, is extraordinarily effective in focusing our attention on the names of those who died in a controversial and divisive war. Three decades after its dedication, the monument still has the power to move, drawing thousands of visitors and creating an experience that might be said to contribute to a catharsis for those who view it. Names and people still have the